X11 performance problems

Nathaniel Firet · 12-24-2005, 10:55 AM

Hi, all,

X11 seems to get slower and slower as I open and close windows. This is independent of the window manager. I've tried KDE, Gnome, and Xfce.

This is kind of irksome because the Windows ME :P distro that my box came with doesn't have this problem.

Specifics: Dell Dimension 4100, 1 GHz Pentium III, 128 MB RAM, 16MB ATI Rage 128 Pro video board. Fedora Core 4.

Any chance of fixing this?

Thanks, and Merry Christmas!
- NF

Lenard · 12-24-2005, 11:05 AM

Two things, first add more RAM if at all possible. 256-MB or better is a good idea. Second;

http://www.fedorafaq.org/fc3/#radeon

Nathaniel Firet · 12-24-2005, 11:11 AM

Video RAM or CPU RAM?

Enabling 3D support wouldn't help anything. I'm not doing 3D rendering, just plain old X11 windows.

- NF

Nathaniel Firet · 12-24-2005, 11:23 AM

BTW, turning off display while dragging seems to help. But it might take some time before I know for sure.

- NF

Lenard · 12-24-2005, 12:37 PM

Your low on system memory (what you call CPU RAM), please read the RELEASE-NOTES-en[.html] file[s] found on the installation media;

This section lists the memory required to install Fedora Core 3.
Minimum for text-mode: 64MB
Minimum for graphical: 192MB
Recommended for graphical: 256MB

foo_bar_foo · 12-24-2005, 08:48 PM

when xfree made the transition to xfree4 (new modular architecture) there were some bad -- real bad memory leaks. They have mostly been fixed one involving animated cursor just recently) so don't use animated cursor. But it is possible some of what you see is memory leak. It might help to change driver even though you don't need 3d. Often memory leaks and poor performance are due to crappy drivers.

Nathaniel Firet · 12-29-2005, 09:34 AM

vmstat did indeed show a lot of swapping activity and little free memory. So I slapped 512 meg of memory in and performance is much improved. OpenOffice has even become tolerable.

Quote:

Your low on system memory (what you call CPU RAM), please read the RELEASE-NOTES-en[.html] file[s] found on the installation media;

At least I didn't call it core

Thanks for all!

- NF